Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske's blog morphs into Japanese website

Long Beach Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske and those who follow her blog had a surprise Thursday upon the discovery her website had ceased to be a chronicle of city events and politics and had instead morphed into something owned by a Japanese company.

Earlier on Thursday, Schipske's old website, www.gerrieschipske.com, was little more than a template for a Wordpress blog with the most interesting aspect being the fact that much of the text was written in Japanese. By Thursday night, however, the site had been updated to depict a nude woman bathing in a sea of liquid chocolate.

"So somebody in Japan likes me," said Shipske, who is running for mayor. "I'm just going to shift back to my regular blog information."

Doing so, the real councilwoman Schipske has moved her blog to http://gerrieschipske.blogspot.com/. She said her office was inundated with phone calls from constituents wondering what had happened to her blog, which is not an official city website.

Schipske said her previous domain name had been registered with Go Daddy, but had lapsed for the day. Another party had, for some reason, placed a claim on her domain name and had thus managed to snag it.

Schipske said she received no warning about the claim to her domain name.

The councilwoman's old domain name is now the property of an Osaka-based firm called Plan B Co. A translated version of the company's website shows Plan B to be a search-engine optimization firm. SEO firms specialize in helping clients emerge as the top results when potential customers search for those clients' names online.